"If you only knew the misery I felt on hearing you were coming to us," goes on Lady Chetwoode, "dreading lest you might be inclined that way; not of course but that I was very pleased to have you, my dear child, but I fancied you large and healthy-looking, with a country air, red cheeks, black hair, and unbounded gaucherie. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I beheld you slim and self-possessed, and with your pretty yellow hair!"
"You make me blush, you cover me with confusion," says Miss Chesney, hiding her face in her hands.
"Yes, yellow hair is my admiration," goes on Lady Chetwoode, modestly: "I had golden hair myself in my youth."
"My dearest mother, we all know you were, and are, the loveliest lady in creation," says Guy, whose tenderness toward his mother is at times a thing to be admired.
"My dear Guy, how you flatter!" says she, blushing a faint, sweet old blush that shows how mightily pleased she is.
"Do you know," says Lilian, "in spite of being thought horrid, I like comfortable-looking people? I wish I had more flesh upon my poor bones. I think," going deliberately up to a glass and surveying herself with a distasteful shrug,—"I think thin people have a meagre, gawky, hard look about them, eminently unbecoming. I rather admire Mrs. Mount-George, for instance."
"Hateful woman!" says Lady Chetwoode, who cherishes for her an old spite.
"I rather admire her, too," says Sir Guy, unwisely,—though he only gives way to this opinion through a wild desire to help out Lilian's judgment.
"Do you?" says that young lady, with exaggerated emphasis. "I shouldn't have thought she was a man's beauty. She is a little too—too—demonstrative, too prononcée."
"Oh, Guy adores fat women," says Cyril, the incorrigible; "wait till you see Florence: there is nothing of the 'meagre, gawky, hard' sort about her. She has a decided leaning toward embonpoint."